NASA Food Technology Commercial Space Center Mission and Activities

The NASA Food Technology Commercial Space Center at Iowa State University was founded in August 1999 and it has the mission to engage industry and academia to develop food products and processes which will benefit NASA and the public. The specific objectives are: (1) to develop food products that meet the shelf life requirements for Shuttle, International Space Station (ISS), and planetary outpost which are nine months, one year, and five years, respectively; (2) develop equipment and process technologies to convert the proposed 15 crops grown on planetary outpost, Moon or Mars, into safe, edible foods; (3) build partnerships with food companies to develop these new food products and processes to make them available for NASA utilization. The space food challenges being addressed by the center's commercial partners and affiliate faculty are development of new food products, development of new food processing equipment, extending the shelf life of foods, improving and monitoring food safety, packaging of foods, development of food waste management systems, and development of disinfection systems for space travel. Our commercial partner activities will be highlighted with one partner's success to a finished product being described.